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Musings about the virtual and the real world

Fanfest impressions

Well, so the annual fanfest came and went and I just want to list some impressions. Unlike the last 2 years, I was not able to stream significant portions of it. I managed the see some of the security panel and some of the keynote itself. Of that in bit.

So, overall and superficial impression, this fanfest seemed less boisterous than last year’s. Again, maybe it’s a perspective thing but I did not “feel” the audience get excited about the delivered content. Maybe it’s the panels I watched, maybe it is the content of the patch expansion but industry and a few – very cool looking – pirate ships don’t make for screaming audiences.

Industry is not what I do at best of times and with reduces play times, I don’t do it at all. But I like the overall intent to balance industry activity with the risk-reward philosophy that EVE aims to espouse. Industry in high security space has nearly been risk free and on-par with the value created doing it in riskier areas. This was out of balance and I support CCP to tackle this rather mundane task with an entire expansion. The consequences seem to have been debated hotly – But to be honest there are so many changes that it has the potential to destabilize the entire economy. And like any good system, it will stabilize fairly rapidly but likely unpredictably.

I really like the removal of restrictions to build your pos anywhere for example. The standing grind was nothing but tedious and why restrict the use of poses in the first place? Let everyone build their own little home, let moons be fought over, let the ice prices for fuel spike, let valuable planets for for robotics and mechanical parts frequently change hands. There never had been a good reason to tie the ability to put a pos up to the local status. Glad they removed it.

Mining, well I am really glad that lowsec gets a boost and spawn valuable ore missing from high sec. Using the venture, many have ventured (yes, yes) into low security space to raid gas already. Ore has never been valuable enough to warrant the risk but it now may just be work out. I would have loved to see a brand new mechanic that supports active mining. A new laser that blows up an asteroid and makes it fracture it into bits of compressed ore for example. Need to balance the risk / reward of course, but CCP is getting good at that. But no, the most boring activity in New Eden has not been touched.

Oh god I love the new cloaky mining ship. It’s perfect, perfect. It’s what I always wanted to have. It really allows deep raids into hostile territory, acquire gas or ore, then scan it’s own way out via wormhole space for example. Combine this with a mobile depot and bring up the rear with a Viator, and you have a deep-space raiding unit. I can see adventurous high-sec teams use wormhole routes deep into nullsec, strip it clean before the locals know what happened and bug out into highsec. And of course, it can fire a Covert cyno! Oh my, if this isn’t beautiful bait, i don’t know. It’s just gorgeous. I want many. My expectation is that lots of noobs want it to raid the new lowsec ore sites. They will not realize that the locals scan down everything and patrol the region of hapless miners. There will be so many tears….

Wormhole content. Well, Jester laments that there are no Wormhole CSM members on the new council. I don’t understand his comment at all. Evidence now shows that whether or not there are CSM members from WHs, no changes are made. Wormholes received exactly no change other than the said mining ship and I believe some changes to pos mechanic that make industry easier. No additional content whatsoever. Now, I am not complaining, wormhole space is good as it is but man, just throw us something, a single bone, make sleepers drop something new, anything to make us believe you have not forgotten about us. Oh, well. My concern is that pos fuel will get very expensive and the risk / reward will not work in C1-C4. We shall see.

Lastly, DUST and keynotes. Well, so my impression (again, I did not watch everything) is that they are letting DUST fade out with the PS3 and move to something highly speculative and undefined on PC using an established engine. So far, so good. Basically, starting from scratch. That’s not a bad thing but I feel sorry for the console dustbunnies that were thrown under the bus. Well, that teaches you to be an early adopter for ccp technology. Once burned, twice shy, as they say but hey, there is Valkyrie! Right. No, I bought a PS3 to play dust, not going to pay for more hardware to play an experimental title from ccp. I let this simmer for at least 2 years beyond release.

About the convergence on characters. I think it’s going to be wicked cool to use one character in all three games eventually, Lore aside. I really want Orv (from my fiction) to eject from his ship in eve, jump into a ground fighter in Valkyrie and last minute get a dropsuit and shoot it out planetside-style. The vision, I get. But I am one of the last few hundred PC users on the planet. I am old and stick to a real computer, not even a laptop or tablet thing (although I write this on an iPad). The world is moving away from PC and Hilmar tells me that the big gamble of ccp is to converge on PC? Oh my, my head spins. His strategy guys must have some data that the rest of the interwebs don’t have. It sounds to be like a hailmary pass. Play stations don’t work out, so let’s try PC again. All arguments for mobile platforms, cannibalism of players from eve to another platform and many more discussed reasons why dust on ps3 was a good idea are out of the window. As I said my head spins.

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2 responses to “Fanfest impressions”

I am not sure, other than doomand despair IT Mags (read rags) articles showing how a dip in sales, like a slight drop in subs, MEANS DEATH UNTO PCs/CCP… ohh effin please. I work in IT as sooo damn many of us do and I can tell you from my 17 years experience I am swapping more PCs today from XP to 7 or 8 than I did 95 to XP… and not just in offices either. Yes mobile devices are the current rage, and they will be around in many more forms than we know of now… that does not mean there will be no need for a full bore Personal Computer in some quite powerful format.

I haven’t played EVE on a desktop in at least 2, 2 1/2 years… I play on a more powerful laptop and I dual screen off if it too…. All the devices, from the smallest nanopod to the biggest AlienWare multi Hi-end video card gaming monster are of use and have their place in the world… Just cause something new comes out doesn’t always… hear me DUST 415!! doesn’t ALWAYS mean the old things have to go… Especially when the old things are not even 40 yet…. sheesh.

Well, there is hype. I agree. Many PC games still flourish. And then there are my 3 cousins in Europe. None of them have (private) PCs, 2 have old laptops they are planning to get rid of. They will be the last generation PC (or laptop) users.